Shared Leadership During a Crisis: How Schools Use Collaborative Decision Making to Adapt to Changing Conditions

• In Event: Leading Through Crisis: Lessons From School Principals' Leadership During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Purpose

Schools have long been called to embrace shared leadership to enhance organizational elements like professional culture (e.g., Bryk et al., 2010; Hallinger, 2011), instructional practice (e.g., Wahlstrom & Louis, 2008), teacher leadership and efficacy (Leithwood & Mascall, 2008; Moolenaar et al., 2012), and student achievement (e.g., Louis et al., 2010). However, transition to shared leadership has been slow (e.g., Authors, 2016c) and may require large external shocks (e.g., COVID-19 and the move to remote learning) to catalyze deep change (Pullen, 1993). Thus, we ask:
(1) To what degree was leadership shared between teachers and administrators during the crisis?
(2) What were the organizational conditions that hindered or supported this shared leadership?

Framework

While general agreement exists regarding the need for more collaborative forms of school leadership (Darling-Hammond et al. 2017; Pounder et al., 1995), and structural initiatives to produce such leadership proliferate (e.g., Authors, 2016c; Louis et al., 2010), results are mixed (Authors, 2014; Huggins et al., 2017). Perhaps one reason for the lag between the technical shift to greater collaboration and the deeper shift to real shared decision-making, is cultural change is far more difficult to produce than structural change (Heifetz & Linsky, 2002). Norms regarding both principals’ and teachers’ roles are partially to blame for why shared leadership remains the exception rather than the norm (Fletcher & Kaufer, 2003; Mayrowetz et al., 2007). Given the entrenched nature of school culture and the need to change it to effectively implement shared leadership, could an external shock to it and daily operations create new opportunities for shared leadership?

Data & Methods

To explore this question, we use data (n=120 interviews) from the large qualitative study described above. We conducted thematic analysis (Boyatzis, 1998) with inductive and deductive coding. First, we selected 20 interviews and conducted line-by-line analysis Charmaz (2006). Also informing our codes was literature on shared leadership and decision-making and the organizational conditions that support or hinder such efforts (e.g., Spillane et al., 2001; Seashore Louis et al., 2010). After creating initial codes, we applied them to the other interviews, writing shared memos, and overlapping our analysis groups of interviews at regular intervals to help ensure inter-rater reliability.

Results

Early findings show leaders relied on their formal teacher leaders and structures (e.g., instructional leadership teams) to lead adaptive, instructional aspects in response to school closures, though true decision-making authority varied by the degree of autonomy they enjoyed prior to the pandemic. Additionally, when flexibility was introduced into the system and these structures were freed from traditional time, space, and evaluation constraints, they appeared more effective.

Significance

Even during “normal” times, leaders frequently respond to crises, from the more sudden and disruptive (e.g., hurricanes; shootings; etc.) to the more persistent (e.g. racial injustice; poverty, trauma). We hope from the pandemic school systems and leaders can learn how to remove barriers and strengthen supports for shared leadership to occur and sustain over time whatever the future holds.

Authors

• Erin Anderson, University of Denver

• Jennie Weiner, University of Connecticut